Critical Rhetorics of Race

Kent A. Ono, Michael G. Lacy

• Publisher: NYU Press
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9780814762363
• Topic: Literatur
• Subtopic: Nordamerikanische Literaturkritik

According to many pundits and cultural commentators, the U.S. is enjoying a post-racial age, thanks in part to Barack Obama's rise to the presidency. This high gloss of optimism fails, however, to recognize that racism remains ever present and alive, spread by channels of media and circulated even in colloquial speech in ways that can be difficult to analyze.

In this groundbreaking collection edited by Michael G. Lacy and Kent A. Ono, scholars seek to examine this complicated and contradictory terrain while moving the field of communication in a more intellectually productive direction. An outstanding group of contributors from a range of academic backgrounds challenges traditional definitions and applications of rhetoric. From the troubling media representations of black looters after Hurricane Katrina and rhetoric in news coverage about the Columbine and Virginia Tech massacres to cinematic representations of race in Crash, Blood Diamond, and Quentin Tarantino's films, these essays reveal complex intersections and constructions of racialized bodies and discourses, critiquing race in innovative and exciting ways. Critical Rhetorics of Race seeks not only to understand and navigate a world fraught with racism, but to change it, one word at a time.

I Racialized Masculinities

1 Apocalypse
The Media’s Framing of Black Looters, Shooters, and Brutes in Hurricane Katrina’s Aftermath

Michael G. Lacy and Kathleen C. Haspel

In late August 2005, the United States was exposed. Hurricane Katrina hit the Gulf Coast and became the most lethal and destructive hurricane in U.S. history,¹ causing 1,836 deaths, destroying 300,000 homes,² and costing $150 billion in damages across three states.³ Media coverage of the storm’s aftermath was marked by crime news reports that New Orleans had descended into chaos, anarchy, and lawlessness. However, further investigation revealed that almost all news media reports of looting, shooting, rapes, murders, and mayhem were unsubstantiated, exaggerated, or false.⁴ Federal and state government officials now believe that the erroneous news reports “slowed the response to the disaster and tarnish[ed] the image of the victims.”⁵

Critical rhetorical scholars argue that popular culture discourse constitutes a diffuse text, embodied by discursive signs, fragments, and recurring storylines that tap into, invoke, and activate larger meta-narratives or cultural myths that extend over time and space,⁶ yet are independently experienced by people.⁷ The deep formal structures of news discourse create audience expectations based on previous or similar texts, forms, and experiences, offering mythic storylines and motivations that resolve cultural problems in familiar and nostalgic ways,⁸ while concealing ideologies and cultural fears or anxieties.⁹

In this chapter, we argue that Katrina’s aftermath became a great human catastrophe, because dominant U.S. news media produced a diffuse mythic narrative, transforming New Orleans into a primitive swamp that unleashed primordial and sinful creatures in the form of dangerous black brutes who looted, raped, murdered, and took over the city. The narrative implied that large militaristic forces, harnessed by white paternalistic heroes, were necessary to rescue New Orleans’ women, children, and elderly from the black beasts. But, mythic heroes never arrived in Katrina’s aftermath. Instead, institutional officials demonized black looters, absolved themselves of failures, lionized local white civil servants and John Wayne lookalikes, and vilified the hurricane victims as “third world” racial Others and criminals. The narrative expresses deep cultural fears that our democratic government and institutions will not save us in times of trial, and our sacred white western heroes are simply relics of a time gone by. Paradoxically, such conditions provide an opportunity for critical scholars and nimble politicians to face these problems, identify with human suffering, and become heroic.

In this chapter, we describe Hurricane Katrina’s impact; the critical methods and procedures we used to reconstruct the narrative embodied by major news stories; and the structural features and functions of the narrative, which are (1) an apocalyptic scene comprised of brutish black looters and tainted evacuees and (2) fallen heroes, which include failed institutional leaders and local civil servant heroes. We also consider the implications of the media’s reproduction of archetypal black villains and white western heroes in contemporary contexts.

Brief History

The National Hurricane Center (hereafter NHC) reported that Hurricane Katrina landed in New Orleans as a Category 4 storm, with driving rain and sustained winds of 125 miles per hour and a storm surge with 30-foot-high waves that crashed, topped, and breached the Lake Pontchartrain levees within minutes.¹⁰ Eighty percent of the Crescent City was flooded, some parts under 20 feet of water. Dead bodies were seen floating in the water.¹¹

Two days earlier (on August 27), NHC Director Dr. Max Mayfield warned President Bush, FEMA Director Michael Brown, Department of Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, Louisiana Governor Kathleen Babineaux Blanco, and New Orleans Mayor C. Ray Nagin that the levees could fail, and there could be a large loss of life.¹²

Mayor Nagin ordered a voluntary evacuation on August 27, a mandatory evacuation on August 28 (the first time in the city’s history), and a total evacuation on August 31. About 300,000 people got out of the city through the only available route, westbound via the I-10 span bridge, while about 90,000 did not.¹³ For the remaining residents, Mayor Nagin designated the New Orleans Superdome the “refuge of last resort.”¹⁴ Once the Superdome reached its capacity (about 30,000 people), rescue workers sent people to the Convention Center; that number swelled to 20,000 people who waited to be rescued for three days under squalid conditions. FEMA ordered 18 medical disaster and rescue teams, along with supplies, equipment, water, and MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) for 15,000 people.¹⁵ On August 31, FEMA staff members told director Brown that people were dying at the Superdome. On September 2, 6,500 National Guard troops arrived in New Orleans, providing food and water to the evacuees and restoring order. On September 3 and September 4, 42,000 evacuees were bused to other U.S. cities.¹⁶ About 2,000 people remained trapped in hotels, hospitals, schools, and homes,¹⁷ most of whom were airlifted off rooftops over the next two days.

In one week, 1,577 people lost their lives in Louisiana; 200 bodies were unidentified; over 5,000 children were reported missing (all were accounted for); and New Orleans’ population was reduced from 450,000 to 316,000 residents.¹⁸

Critical Methods and Procedures

We collected 323 news stories¹⁹ about Hurricane Katrina published between August 29 and September 6, 2005, using the ProQuest National Newspaper Index, which provides access to national and regional newspapers in the United States (ProQuest.com).²⁰ We analyzed the news stories’ content, isolated the discourses’ formal narrative structures, and aligned them with their corresponding dramatistic metaphors (scene, act, agent, agency, and purpose) to reconstruct a coherent narrative.²¹ We found that the news discourse produced a mythic narrative featuring an apocalyptic scene filled with dangerous black brutes and chaos, which implied that a great white militaristic force (e.g., a cavalry) should restore order and rescue the culture. Tragically, the apocalyptic scene enabled government officials to excuse their delays, absolve them of their failure to save New Orleans’ poor and black evacuees, and taint victims as dangerous criminals. The formal structural features of this dystopian narrative are (1) the apocalyptic scene and (2) fallen heroes.

Apocalyptic Scene

Apocalyptic narratives reveal a dystopian vision of a final great catastrophe that unleashes monstrous beasts reaping total destruction onto a sinful culture, reordering life as we know it.²² During Hurricane Katrina’s aftermath, major news discourse produced a diffuse apocalyptic narrative, filled with brutish black looters and racial Others, reducing New Orleans to lawlessness, anarchy, and chaos.

Apocalyptic Looters

Kenneth Burke observes that narratives consisting of multiple agents often blur into a scene that externalizes human action and objectifies and dehumanizes human beings,²³ especially black victims, notes Martha Solomon.²⁴ The most distinctive scenic feature of Hurricane Katrina news coverage during the aftermath was, collectively, the looters. Looters appeared 369 times in our sample of major news stories. Although most news reports did not name the looters’ racial identity,²⁵ they were depicted as archetypal racial villains: subhuman, irrational, criminal, immoral, and demonic beings.²⁶ Such rhetoric served to justify extreme actions and policies against New Orleanians, including shooting and killing them.²⁷

Looters as Subhuman

Major press coverage depicted the looters as subhuman beings who emerged from apocalyptic conditions²⁸ by using archetypal and primordial symbols, objects, and images (e.g., fire, smoke, dark skies, gas, water, and putrid smells²⁹). The primordial images suggested that the storm reduced New Orleans to a primitive swamp, unfit for human life or existence. The only surviving creatures in New Orleans’ toxic waters were the demonic symbols of biblical sin: snakes and insects. The Los Angeles Times reported: “The water is the enemy…. It hides snakes, dead, bloated rats and, in the areas with the worst flooding, untold numbers of bloated bodies.”³⁰ The Chicago Tribune offered eyewitness testimony: “‘We saw dead alligators,’ said James Swanson, a rescue crew member trained as a swimmer … ‘four of them, belly up. If [they] can’t survive in their own waters, you know it was bad.’”³¹

Out of these base conditions, the “Looters … emerged, as if from some dark corner of the civic soul … savages,” wrote a Wall Street Journal columnist.³² “Looters are among the lowest form of life,” echoed a citizen in the Washington Post.³³ The Boston Globe, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, and Los Angeles Times depicted the looters as aggressive predators (emphasis added): “[A] restaurant … in New Orleans’s Warehouse District … has fallen prey to looters.”³⁴ “[L]ooters appeared, roaming the streets and preying at will.”³⁵ “[A]bout 30 looters descended on the general store in east New Orleans.”³⁶ Major columnists from the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times described the looters as “scavengers,”³⁷ “wilding” on innocent victims.³⁸ Some news reports likened looters to insects: “‘The looters, they’re...